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of control and frogs, Re: What is at stake?

2002-01-24 08:10:03


Ari Ollikainen wrote:

At 6:53 PM -0800 1/23/02, Ed Gerck wrote:

In addition, within the last ten years the Internet has changed radically
from a centrally controlled network to a network of networks -- with no
control point whatsoever.  There is, thus, further reason to doubt the
assertion that what worked ten years ago will work today in the same
way.


        Really?

        Could you name the entity (and network) that you claim
        centrally controlled "the Internet" a decade ago?

ARPA.

Control was injected into the original ARPANET by the ARPA
Contracts, which controlled all users and uses of the initial
ARPANET and the Early Internet.  The Appropriate Use Rules
dissolved slowly between 1986 an 1995.  Thus, one of the ARPA
roles was to instill trust by holding the power to remove badly
behaving users.  Very few were removed, but in the early days,
everyone knew that had better behave, or else...

However, when the Appropriate Use Rules dissolved slowly
between 1986 an 1995, it seems that the denizens of the Net did
not become aware of the loss of trust until it was truly gone (now!)...
and now they wonder where it went, or if it ever existed, cause
they did not see it going away;-)...

Stef has an interesting chronology of these events, in terms
of the paradigm shifts that hit the Net as it developed. I am
indebted to his clear formulation (some of which I repeated
above) as well as to his Frog analogy. What has happened,
is that as the ARPA controls slowly dissolved with the
evolution of the Internet, it has had the effect of Boiling The
Frog, where-in the Frog does not notice that anything is
happening  until now it is too late for the Frog to do anything
about it.



        BTW, how accurate do you suppose the US Census Bureau data
        can be in regard to what homes/individuals have/do whatever,
        given that it collects its data every decade...?

;-) That would be the best job in the world, if it were true. The US Census
collects data every day.  Please see their interesting report "Home
Computers and Internet Use in the United States: August 2000 " at
 http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p23-207.pdf

Cheers,

Ed Gerck



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